Jazz Criticism…a criticism…

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Listening to Jamie C. this week on R2, where every track played is “amazing, superb, brilliant, outstanding” (ohhhh really?) and reading John Fordham’s reviews in the Guardian, with nothing less than three stars even if its matt paint drying (esp BRITISH matt paint drying), what has happened to Jazz critiquing? Hump in his R2 slot regularly slagged off some of the music he played – I happily remember a scathing remark about Bobby Watson playing Chelsea Bridge…

Has jazz now reached a level of competence and facility that everything melds in one? Where’s the REAL effort? Where’s the edge?

Where ‘s my wine.

BN.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

an amazing, superb, brilliant, outstanding post El Senor and yer wine was snaffled by Jez who needs the refreshment as he pumps out another amazing, superb, brilliant, outstanding proggie innit

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Gimme that wine (Unhand that bottle)
Gimme that wine (Unhand that bottle)
Gimme that wine (Unhand that bottle)
Beat m' head outta shape, but leave my grape
Watch, ring and money ain't nothin' but don' mess with my wine, Jim

- Jon Henricks.

BN.

[Alyn_Shipton]

BN
I hope you would exempt Jazz Library from this. The programme aims to be critical but enthusiastic about the subjects' music. Furthermore, I suspect you might not be a regular reader of the Times, but you will find that this critic (and actually my two jazz critic colleagues there as well) are not afraid to dish out less than enthusiastic appraisals. I think my lowest ever scores were for a concert on the South Bank by Spring Heel Jack and Jason Pierce (completely drowning out Evan Parker, Han Bennink et al with meaningless electronic noise) which was one of the most unpleasant experiences I have ever had in a concert hall. Run close by the vapid meanderings of Nils Petter Molvaer with John Paul Jones at last year's Cheltenham JF.

[Ian Thumwood]

I think that Bluesnik has raised an interesting point and , if you read a website like "All about jazz," one that is not without a strong degree of truth. The quality newspaper reviews, as Alyn has alluded to, tend to remain the one area where written criticism tends not to be so partisan but even if you take a dumbed down jazz programme like Jamie Cullum's, I find there is a tendency to over-praise CD's in particular. Jazz websites also tend to be very anodyne in their reviews so that even long-forgotten recordings by some of the obscure foot-soldiers of jazz are deemed to be classic in some respect even if they are ordinary in the extreme.

I've often wondered jazz how much lawyers are influencing many CD reviews and how journalists may have a set agenda as is the case of John Kelman on AAJ who appears reluctant to be too critical of anything the ECM label issues even if it is a long while since Manfred Eicher's label was anywhere as near as formidable as it was in the 70's / 80's. Having exchanged correspondence on a couple of occasions with John and read some of his responses on the bear pit which is the AAJ Forum, I think that this largely stems from the fact that he is a gentleman and adverse to causing offence. As someone whose career is tangled up so much with the music, I don't suppose that it would be in his interest to be too negative even if he wished. In these times of lawyers seeming to be crawling over everything, I think that some of the major record labels would probably be icking up the phone if a review was consdiered to be too savage albeit there aren't any jazz musicians on any of the major labels these days who are releasing new material.

As both a consumer (buying CDs and going to converts / festivals) and someone who enjoys reading, it is often compelling to read about your musical heros and a well-written article / favourable review will prompt me to see an artist / buy a CD even if I know nothing of the musician or have never heard their work before. In my experience, good criticism can be persuasive as well as enjoyable to read.

Half of me tends to agree with Bluesnik but I would also counter that there has been a marked improvement in the degree of writing and research pver the last 20-odd years in books about jazz. For me, writers are at last addressing earlier forms of the music with proper, rigorous historical analysis. Previously, many writers were happy enough to take the comments of musicians are verbatum so that you end up with writers like Alan Lomax producing compelling accounts by the likes of Jelly Roll Morton where the historical fact is very much second in priority to a good story. Even as good a writer as Gunther Schuller could fall into this trap - I would also suggest that GS is also guilty of being a eccentrically partisan is some instances too. As someone who is also a fan of history books, there have been some brilliant attempts to find the actual truth about the origins of jazz which have thrown the accepted history into grave doubt so as to re-address a more diverse account than the often "Romantic" accounts that stemmed from much the 30's onwards. I would have to say that I think Alyn is one of the new school of writers who address the subject with proper, historical rigor. Lawrence Gushee would be another. A curious thing for be is that this process is now being mirrored with football where books on the subject were considered some of the worst on the bookself as little as about 5 years ago. Some of the best books I've read over the last few years have been about the game with the likes of "Why England Lose" and "My father and other working class football heroes" reaising the bar for books about football.

Part of the problem with modern reviews is that we are now dealing in an agae of unprecedented musical mastery and even the most ordinary jazz musician could now technically rip the arms and legs off his equiavlent of 50-60's years ago. I find it curious how our preceptions of recorded jazz change over the years. There are records like the 30's Basie sides which just seem to sound better and better with age as well as seeming to be of more importance as the years pass. Elsewhere, some "older " musicians such as Wayne Shorter seem to be producing some of the best music of their careers. Much jazz criticism seems to be framed by misconceptions and notions that particular records are important, particular players were in form during a certain perioed and that other musicians might have been too commercial to have any genuine worth. With great art, the music will outlast the negative review but it is always more fun to read something that is slightly dismissive even if the reviewer has got things wrong.

As far as concerts have gone, one of the worst gigs I've been to was by the Italian Instable Orchestra and this was one of the new occasions that I walked out before the end. John Fordham gave the same gig in Basinstoke a 5-star review! I think that live gigs are probably a bit like football matches and as the event if happening in the instant, everyone in the audience will have a different view and will be unable to reflect upon their perception without the advantage of a replay.It is probably easier to be negative after a concert but CD's always take several listens to reveal their depths.

[Serial_Apologist]

The nature of jazz criticism has changed. In the 60s, when I started listening, it's reviewers tended towards tribal loyalties, so anything seen or released on vinyl was pretty good if it was trad, bebop, free etc. Stadium Fusion brought in a more discerning type of MM journalist who took his (usually) cues from rock criticism: very hot on perceived slippage. I think this was because of a) competition: could jazz criticism really afford to let writing standards slip below those for rock? and b) the greater band/audience distance Fusion promulgated by its very nature permitted some to appraise the music dispassionately. Post-bop was on the backburner, as anyone perusing events listings in the 70s can see. The other kind of music predominating, free jazz/free improv, tended to make friends of its chronologisers, writers with often a social and political take to spin, and a kind of symbiosis developed between a marginalised activity and those understanding of the causes of that marginalisation. In the 1980s a new breed of critic emerged favouring retro chic jazz as positively exempifying creative readjustment to new political and economic realities, post-Reagan/Thatcher, accusing the freedom-seeking 60s generation as having failed. So anything "new" coming along was welcomed as picking up the threads where jazz had lost the plot. Always the jazz critic's task consists in the problem of how possible is it, really, to distance oneself from a form of music making whose success is in the give-and-take of its makers and audience - of which the critic is a part - and that, for most of its existence, has enjoyed Cinderella status in terms of music coverage, excepting periods when it could be presented as a lifestyle accessory?

[Quarky]

Agreeing with everything that has been written on this thread, in particular on Jez Nelson's programme earlier his week, nevertheless:

Is anyone fooled by Jamie Cullum's showmanship? If they are, then they have a lot more listening to do. I'm often intrigued by his choices of tracks, but I assume his chat is aimed at a wider audience than the serious jazz-buff.

To my mind, JC's attitude is not all that different from the technique used in R3 classical concerts, where presenter/ soloist/conductor make a highly intellectual presentation of the music about to be performed - the effect is the same, the music is praised to the skies, no matter its "objective" value.

[Tenor Freak]

One for Bluesnik:

[Tenor Freak]

I've said this before on the old Bored, but I think it bears repeating here. When I first started listening to jazz in the mid-80s, my main sources of info were The Sounds of Jazz on Radio 2, Jazz Today on Radio 3, and The Wire. There were a lot of interesting critics about, who were not guaranteed to praise everything. Some of the best critics in that mag were Richard Cook, Jack Cooke, Max Harrison and Brian Morton.

I remember Charles Fox, when playing music on Jazz Today, was not always very complimentary about the music he played; I recall one Franco Ambrosetti track where he pointed out the flaws in the ensemble playing and suggested a lack of rehearsal spoiled what could have been a great LP.

Critics should really do their job and filter the music into the great, the good, the merely average, and the dross. The tendency on Radio 3 and Radio 2 nowadays to praise everything does not cut it.

[Byas'd Opinion]

Do we have to allow for a difference in audience between people writing the token jazz reviews in mainstream publications and those writing for a specialist jazz audience?

If you're writing, say, a couple of album reviews to go in the Graun's Film and Music section each week, you probably write about the best, or at least most interesting, ones to come out that week. I suspect you see part of your role, as a jazz fan in a non-jazz world, being to promote jazz in general, and that means pointing people to the best of what's around.

Specialist publications like Jazz Journal can be a lot more critical. Here's just a few phrases from album reviews in the Feb 2012 issue:
On Joey de Francesco

pleasant but just short of bland

On Stan Getz

a sameness about it that induces boredom after half an hour

On Trio VD

if this kind of thing is jazz's future, it's time to hibernate forever

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

point well made byas'd


... i acquired my critical language from Downbeat in the very late fifties and through the mid sixties ... course it was war in them days ... new thing was worse than the Chinese music for bop .... Coleman Coltrane Harriott really pulled the jazz world apart ... well at least in teh melody Maker

[Ian Thumwood]

Byas

I had forgotten about this magazine and didn't realise that it was still going as so many magazines have gone to the wall since the days of the internet. Actually, I have always felt that there was a degree of amateurism with this magazine and effectively stopped buying it as, like Bruce, found that "Wire" offered a better coverage of the kind of jazz I was into at the time.

"Jazz Journal" offered a lot of debate, largely in favour of jazz from the period 1930-1965 and seemed suspicious of anything contemporary. I can remember the fuss in this magazine when Loose Tubes emerged on the scene. The CD reviews could be outspoken but it seemed to me that this was more often the case when they opposed anything that was remotely contemporary albthough I think there was one reviewer called Simon Adams who always wrote about the latest ECM releases which was what I was in to during the 1980's. I've not seen the magazine for over twenty years and the narrow-mindedness of some of the articles by the likes of Steve Voce put me off. Personally, I prefer to read a magazine that covers all aspects and eras of jazz favourably - I don't like it where the journalism is partisan to one particulat style which was was I jacked in "Jazzwise " in the mid-2000's (as well as for Stuart Nicholson's increasingly tiresome writing as he seemed to keen to write about George Bush as anything about music.) I did enjoy "Jazz Hot" when it was around as the French was easy enough for me to understand (helped by simple Q&A interviews) and they dealt with all styles of music.

[Serial_Apologist]

I did enjoy "Jazz Hot" when it was around as the French was easy enough for me to understand (helped by simple Q&A interviews) and they dealt with all styles of music.

Jazz Hot: Pourquoi existez vous?
Ian Thumwood - Pour le jazz, naturellement!

[Byas'd Opinion]

I used to read Jazz Review, which was edited by Richard Cook, but shortly after Cook's death it merged with Jazz Journal (which I think was having problems of its own). I must admit I much prefer the old Jazz Review to the merged magazine: to me it had a much better balance between covering the contemporary scene and examining jazz from the past.

I used to read the Wire which was very good for a while but moved away from being a jazz magazine to one which, on the rare occasions I glance through it nowadays, seems to be about the experimental end of electronica and dance music (with a nod to avant-garde jazz and free improv every now and again).

[Serial_Apologist]

I used to read the Wire which was very good for a while but moved away from being a jazz magazine to one which, on the rare occasions I glance through it nowadays, seems to be about the experimental end of electronica and dance music (with a nod to avant-garde jazz and free improv every now and again).

That is largely correct, and has been the case for a good decade now - and it's b***dy expensive too. From time to time good articles on particular personalities in jazz do get aired in The Wire, and for that reason I usually peruse the latest edition from the shelf before deciding on buying. That's OK, as long as the shopkeepers don't think you're just paging through top shelf material!